16 What enables infants to give care?
Prosociality and learning by alter-centric
participation






Introduction


In my lecture last fall here in The Academy,
marking the beginning of a new academic year in
The Centre of Advanced Study, I tried to give you
an idea of what we are trying to accomplish here
at the Centre in our Theory Forum group, as a
part of a more comprehensive researchers'
network. Some of our work will be published in a
collective source book (for which Cambridge
University Press has just offered me a contract).
In this evening's talk the focus will be on my
own studies of intra- and interpersonal processes
in dyadic systems in which care-giving and
reciprocity are exhibited. To this question,
'What enables infants to give and reciprocate
care?', I shall offer a reply derived from a
systems-theoretical postulate which I proposed
1986 (actually at a Gordon Research conference on
Cybernetics of Cognition). Four of those scholars
who were the first to realize the significance of
the postulate and refer to it in their writings
are present here tonight -- Sophie Freud, Karsten
Hundeide, Ragnar Rommetveit, and Colwyn
Trevarthen -- making this a special occasion for
me since I shall make a further step derived from
that postulate.


It has already yielded a collateral prediction,
which now appears to be partly confirmed. I
predicted in 1994 that an ego-centric kind of
imitation errors would be found in autism in
face-to-face situations, reflecting an impairment
in the capacity which is the keynote concern of
this talk: namely, the capacity for what I term
alter-centric participation, i.e. the capacity to
virtually move with the facing other; the very
reverse of seeing others from an ego-centric
perspective. I shall try to indicate how infants
can learn from caregivers and afford care to
others in virtue of bodily intersubjective
communion enabled by alter-centric participation.
without any presuppositions about toddlers having
to "de-center" in virtue of higher-order


In the conclusion I shall venture a new
prediction that may come to invite this new
label: "neurosociological", and which some of
you will find too reductionistic for your taste.
Please, bear in mind, though, my systems-concern
with the interplay between nature, nurture, and
culture, and that the horizon for this talk is
this:"Intersubjective Communication and Emotion
in Early Ontogeny" -- the title of the
forthcoming source book:. Here we purport, with a
comparative eye also on non-human primate
communication, to re-write, as it were, some of
the story of child development, replacing earlier
theoretical views of infants as ego-centric and
a-social with a new understanding of infant
sociality from the outset, for example, of


- how the newborn can communicate by imitation
and soon affectively engage in dialogue-like
interplay with adults;


- how babies attempt pre-speech and show
perceptual attunement to speech patterns in the
community into which they are born; and


- how toddlers sometimes help and comfort other
children, i.e. exhibit early prosociality.




Occurrences of early prosociality


So, how come? What enables infants and toddlers
to give care? That is the question for this
lecture.2 It presupposes that an empirically
based positive reply be given to the question of
whether they are capable of prosociality. In some
previous papers (Bråten 1992, 1996ab) I have
referred to case studies and cross-cultural
studies of children, including toddlers, even
infants, helping or comforting others in nursery,
family, and cultural settings, as reported inter
alia by Anna Freud (1951, 1973), by Zahn-Waxler
and Radke-Yarrow (1979, 1982), and by Elisabeth
Whiting and Carolyn Edwards (1988), who works in
our group here.


The question about the nature and nurture of
pro-sociality cannot be quite dissociated from
questions about anti-sociality, even abuse. We
know today that the quality of child rearing and
socializing background appears to have a profound
impact on the manner in which toddlers react
towards other children in need or distress (Berk
1994:405; George and Main 1979; Main and George
1985; Trickett and Kuczynski 1986).


Background variables alone do not suffice,
however, in an account of the aetiology of early
prosociality. There is a nature-nurture interplay
here. Aside from individual differences, we have
to search for possible mechanisms at play when
companions afford models for and experiences of
socio-emotional behaviour. I invite you to
consider the possibility that the complex
nature-nurture equation of prosociality entails
some sort of endowed sociocapacity in infants to
tune into the feelings of caregivers and peers,
and to virtually participate in the other's
activity, moving with the others' movements
even in an en face situation. In contrast to
viewing the adult-infant caregiver situation as
one in which the infant merely receives care and
observes the adult from an ego-centric position,
I shall draw your attention to the infant's
apparent capacity to feel to be moving with the
caregiver's movements from the caregiver's
position. For this I propose a new term:
alter-centric participation. This is the reverse
of perception of facing subjects from an
ego-centric perspective, and complementary to
allo-centric perception by the disengaged
observer -- for example viewing the table in this
room independently of the observer's position.


Let me exemplify by three anecdotal reports, the
first two from a wartime nursery in Great
Britain, reported by Anna Freud and Burlingham,
the last one from my own recording in a home in
Oslo. Consider first this incident:


(C 1) "Edith (21 months) had taken off her shoe
and sock and tried hard to put them on again.
Paul (23 months) watched from a distance, then
rushed over to her, sat down on the floor, and
took the sock out of her hand. He tried...to put
it on Edith's foot, his mouth open, his tongue
far out, breathing heavily. Edith watched his
face and immediately imitated his expression. For
two or three minutes both children were
absorbed...an expression of utmost strain on
their faces." (Freud & Burlingham 1973)




Here we see demonstrated two pertinent aspects:
First, Paul exhibits care-giving before his
second birthday, re-enacting, as it were, the
kind of helping which other caregivers have
afforded him. Second, even though Paul is the
author of the efforts of trying to put the sock
on Edith's foot, Edith gives evidence of
participating in Paul's activity and feelings,
attested by the way in which they both are
absorbed in his effort, with the same expression
of utmost strain on their faces.


Even more telling, demonstrating how a
one-and-half-year old is capable of transcending
her own bodily ego-centric position and
egoistical needs, is this occurrence, again
reported by Anna Freud, albeit not with my
theoretical spectacles:




(C 2) "Rose (19 months) sat at the table and
drank her cocoa. Edith (17 months) climbed up and
tried to take the mug from Rose's mouth. Rose
looked at her in surprise, then turns the mug and
holds it for Edith so that she could drink the
cocoa."


(Freud and Burlingham, 1973)




Rose's reaction to Edith's clumsy attempt to get
cocoa is most telling, not only because of her
nurturant act, helping Edith to drink cocoa at
the cost of stopping her own drinking, but
because of the way in which she reverses the mug
in view of Edith's bodily position. By turning
the mug so that Edith can drink from Edith's
position, reverse to that of her own, Rose here
demonstrates her capacity to transcend her own
bodily ego-centric perspective. She gives
evidence of what I term alter-centricity.


Here is another example, from my own recordings:


(C 3) Thomas (11 3/4 month) is being spoon-fed by
his sister (11 years). When Thomas from time to
time is allowed to take the spoon in his own
hand, he feeds his sister in return (Bråten
1996b).


What Rose does in the middle of her second year,
and what Thomas does before his first birthday
anniversary, may look simple to the untrained
observer, and puzzling to researchers who in line
with Piaget's theory attributes only
ego-centricity to toddlers, that is, their being
able to see the world and others in it only from
their own perspective.


My postulate, in contrast, permits the
expectation that what Rose and Thomas do comes
quite natural to them. Long before normal
children develop generalized means for
perspective-taking in G.H. Mead's mediating
sense, and for simulating processes in others
(like adults do in symbolic interaction,
previously proposed by Grice (1974) and Bråten
(1974)), infants should be capable of such
alter-centric participation in the movements of
facing others. This follows from my attributing
to the infant a virtual other perspective that
complements the infant's bodily self
perspective in a asymmetric chiral-like manner
(from Greek for 'handedness'), and hence,
which permits a virtual mirror reversal in the
experience of others' movements in such en face
situations in which Rose and Thomas previously
have taken part. The postulate thus invites
attention to be paid to the face-to-face
situational aspect of feeding situations (C3).
Reciprocating the caregiving, having learnt to do
so by being spoon-fed in previous care-giving
situations in the same face-to-face format, this
boy -- before his first birthday anniversary --
gives evidence of having participated in the
caregiver's movements from her position, which
is the reverse of the boy's own bodily
ego-centric position. That is what I term
learning by alter-centric participation.


Thomas demonstrates his ability to reciprocate
the care-giving, but not necessarily from
altruistic motives. To him and his sister it is
also fun, even funny. But not such great a fun
that he shares all the food with her. The sweet
dessert that follows the main dish, he keeps to
himself. There is the limit to his reciprocating
the care-giving. Thomas re-enacts the
spoon-feeding from his previous experiences of
having felt to be co-enacting such spoon-feeding.


What we see manifested here, however, is of
course much more than learning by participation
in the caregiver. Being quintessential of
caregiving situations, such feeding situations
are precursory of the joint meal, the very
prototypical Gemeinschaft situation in society
and culture. The Latin word companion catches
this beautifully: its root meaning is the joint
breaking of bread. Thomas and Victoria, his
sister (C3), are jointly and reciprocally sharing
a meal, as we say, including each other in a
shared companion space in the mode of felt
immediacy. In the underlying photos and
video-recording we see manifestations of bodily
intersubjective communion, attested by the way in
which they both participate in the other's
eating. Unwittingly the sister opens her mouth as
she offers the spoon to the infant's mouth, and
as he reciprocates he opens his mouth -- now
sharing in his sister's mouth opening. They
complement and fulfil each other's movements as
companion processes in a self-organizing and
re-creative dynamic whole, which I have termed
"dialogic closure" (Bråten 1988) and which
Stern (1995) captures with his term
'proto-narrative envelope'.






Moving with the (m)other's movements


In our culture much of infant-caretaker interplay
occurs in face-to-face situations, even when the
baby is lying at the nursing table. That is
pertinent to my theme of postures and
perspectives. Such face-to-face interplay my be
contrasted to other cultures, for example the
Gusii culture, in which infants are carried on
the back of their older siblings (Levine & Levine
1988).




On offspring postures and prosociality in
nonhuman primates


It may also be contrasted to other species,
carrying their offsprings on the back, such as
shown by the lowland gorilla rescuing a boy who
fell down in the gorilla pit. This prosocial act
occurred in the Brookfield Zoo outside of Chicago
on 16 August 1996. A three-year-old boy fell into
the gorilla pit, plunging 18 feet to the hard
floor. The gorilla mother, Binty, picked up the
unconscious boy, carried him across the pit, and
laid him gently at the exit door, while zoo
keepers came to and kept the other gorillas at a
distance with a water hose. (The rescue was
captured on video and broadcast on television
around the world, and Binty was named The Hero of
the Year in the special Winter 1997 issue of
Newsweek).


In this occurrence, we see demonstrated a clear
case of prosociality in one of our closest
species relatives. It serves to remind us of the
double sided nature-nurture equation of the
aetiology of prosociality. But it also serves to
illustrate these three pertinent aspects: First,
the way in which the offspring bodily moves with
the mother's movements. Second, the offspring
experiences to be moving with the mother from the
mother's perspective; there can be joint
attention from the offspring's ego-centric
perspective, without transcending or reversing
the mother's perspective. Third, from this
perspective the offspring is even afforded the
bodily experience of participating in the
mother's rescue of a third person.


When old enough to ride on their mother's back,
offsprings of gorillas and chimpanzee, in
wildlife as well as in captivity, ride in this
manner. This means that the offsprings on their
backs of the mothers are afforded to move with
the mother's movements and to see the world and
other subjects and things in it, from the
mother's position. From such a position they
may learn to see and manoeuvre in the world from
the ego-centric perspective which they are
afforded in virtue or riding on their mother's
back.3




Being hand-guided by the parent


The same kind of opportunity to move with the
parent's movement, and in addition being
hand-guided, we may see in Gregory Bateson's
photos of the Balinese boy Karba (11-12 months)
being taught by his parents. Karba is being
taught to pick food by his mother and to play an
instrument by his father (appendix in Darwin
1955). Facing the same direction as his parent,
and in virtue of being hand-guided, Karba bodily
feels to be moving with his parent's movements
(cf. figure 15.2 in the previous essay, this
volume)..




Virtually moving with the model's movements as
if the learner were hand-guided


Now, Karba's posture is quite the opposite of
the face-to-face situations in Meltzoff's
(1988) deferred imitation experiments, in which
nine-month-old face the model's performance on
an object out of their reach (replicated also by
Heimann and Meltzoff 1996). Infants are able to
re-enact that performance on the next day, in
spite of their being face-to-face with the
model's enacting his performance. This
face-to-face issue has not been paid attention to
by infancy researchers. Now, it was the
systems-theoretical postulate that drew my
attention to this aspect, opening for a way in
which both the pair of Karba and his parent, and
the pair of the nine-month-old and the model,
could be specified in the same operationally
closed format of a dynamic dyadic system,
entailing bodily engagement in felt immediacy: In
the Balinese case it is manifested in actual
bodily movements in concert; in the deferred
imitation experiments the subsequent re-enactment
by the nine-month-olds suggests that they have
virtually been moving with the performing model
during the previous model exposure (cf. figure
15.3).


The latter, however, presupposes a reversal of
the model's movements as felt by the learner.
And in a pre-conference talk on imitation in
Paris 1.June 1994, I posed this question, which
to my knowledge hitherto had never been asked:
What underlies the perceptual inversion entailed
by such re-enactment of the other's enactment
experienced in a face-to-face situation?
Trevarthen (1986) distinguishes alteroception as
the motivated perception of others that depends
on the specific cerebral response to the other's
body movements, and I define the virtual other as
a non-specific companion perspective that
complements the bodily self perspective with the
operational efficiency (virtus) of an actual
companion perspective (Bråten 1988). Body
movements of actual others included in the
companion space of the virtual other afford crude
alteroception in an appropriating sense, which in
face-to-face situations entails perceptual
inversion. Hence, the model and the learner need
not face the same direction or use a mirror,
unless the novel movements are very complex, or
the child has (autistic) learning problems
(Bråten 1994).




Subjects with autism


Thus, to be or not to be in a face-to-face
situation, makes no difference if you have the
capacity to feel to be moving with the actual
other's movements, reversed in virtue of the
putative bodily-self/virtual-other asymmetry,
while it makes a crucial difference if you are
deprived of or impaired in the capacity to engage
in such felt immediacy with facing others.


Now, in a Behavioral and Brain Science commentary
the year before, I suggested that in subjects
with autism, internal auto-enclosed cycles are
operative without the social-emotional nurture of
other's perspectives as felt from the inside
(Bråten 1993:515). Unlike Rose who reverts the
mug so that Edith can drink (C2), and Thomas (C3)
who re-enacts the movements from the
caregiver's position in a complementary and
reciprocal format in virtue of the mechanism of
alter-centric participation, subjects with autism
should at best be expected to re-enact the
model's enactment as seen and related to their
own ego-centric position:




"Difficulties in imitating body movements in
autism are here predicted to relate to impairment
of the above mechanism and implied to be most
acute in face-to-face situations" (Bråten
1994:16)




The same summer that this systems-theoretical
prediction was voiced in Paris and repeated in
Oslo, an empirical review paper on imitation in
autism appeared. Here Isabel Smith & Susan Bryson
(1994) point to Ohta's (1987) experimental
findings of partial imitation errors in subject
with autism trying to re-enact gestural and
bi-manual tasks, and which Smith (1995)
replicated, yielding the same result: children
with autism, as compared to control children,
manifested errors in imitating gestures,
including rotation of the hand.4 This appears to
support the above prediction.


Smith and Bryson refer to a suggestion about
"the intriguing possibility that these errors
represent attempts of the children with autism to
reproduce the gesture so that their view of their
own hands matches the view of the model" (Smith
& Bryson 1994:264). This suggestion is made and
followed up by Barresi and Moore (1996:120). They
suspect that the problem in autism is a failure
of integrated representation of matched first and
third person information. I see us pointing in
the same direction, albeit with different
accounts. Subjects with autism appear incapable
of observing others from anything but an
auto-enclosed ego-centric perspective, expected
to be revealed by comparisons with a normal child
when both are placed in a face-to-face situation.
While normal children can do what the other is
doing, when invited to do so, children with
autism who understand the invitation, are
expected to have problems in virtue of seeing the
other only from an ego-centric position:
Observing the model from the outside, the subject
is seeing, but not feeling from the inside, what
the model is doing. Seeing the resemblance
between the inside of the model's hands with
the insides of his own, and being incapable of a
virtual reversal of the model's movements as
felt, the child with autism can only do what is
being seen from own position, and will raise
hands with inside inwards.


This may reflect the more general problem in
autism of relating to others. Engagement with
others in complementary and reciprocal format
appears to be impaired. They may echo and follow
others -- subjects and objects -- in line, as it
were, but the reciprocal and complementary
engagement which Thomas (C3) demonstrates may be
beyond their capacity.


Early learning from prototypical caregiving
situations


When Thomas reciprocates the care-giving afforded
by his sister and other previous care-givers, he
give evidence of having learnt by what I term
alter-centric participation. Such alter-centric
participation is inferred to come about in virtue
of the posited complementarity between the bodily
self and the virtual companion perspective. When
the actual other fills the companion space (in
the place of the baby's virtual other),
perceptual inversion and supra-modal binding of
somaesthetic and visual qualities are afforded by
the actual companion movements in virtue of being
included in that space in felt immediacy. Through
my theoretical spectacles, that is what I see
Thomas to have been doing. The previous
spoon-feeding situations which he has
experienced, is of course much more complicated
than situations involving gestural imitation.
Quite a feat, actually, if we stop to consider
that it reflects learning from a virtual mirror
inversion of the caregiver's movements. In
virtue of complementing the baby's bodily self
(in the same asymmetric manner as the baby's
virtual other is complementing the baby's
bodily self) the actual other's movements are
felt to be co-enacted by the baby (as if being
hand-guided by the facing feeder).


Attribute to infants such innate sociocapacity
for alter-centric participation in others in the
mode of felt immediacy. If others in need or
distress reactivate in the child feelings
semblant of the form of bodily self-feelings
evoked in situations in which the infant has
experienced caregiving, then they invite caring
efforts resembling the caring afforded by others
earlier in infancy by virtue of having partaken
in such caring in the reciprocal mode of felt
immediacy.


Thus, for example in the feeding situation, the
infant is not just a recipient of food from the
care-giver, but feels to take a part in the
food-giving in virtue of including the care-giver
in the infant's companion space in felt
immediacy. Alter-centric participation in the
feeder's bodily movements leaves the infant with
not just the experience of having been cared for,
but of having taken part in the caregiving
movements in a reciprocal and complementary
manner. The caregiver included in the infant's
companion space permits the infant not just the
bodily self-experience of being cared for, but to
engage in the caregiving in the reciprocal mode
of felt immediacy. The body movements and
position of the feeder included in the infant's
companion space afford the feeling of virtually
moving with the caregiver in an appropriating
sense even though the face-to-face situation
requires mirror-like reversion. More
specifically, the proprioceptively felt
reciprocal feeding on the part of the infant is
in-formed by the alter-centric feelings of
feeding movements afforded by the caregiver's
feeding act.


Thus, the feeding situation in which the adult
feeds the infant may be regarded as prototypical
of caregiving situations more generally, for
example, when being comforted or cared for when
in need or distress. So then, when another in
need or distress is included in the toddler's
companion space, affected by such previous
experiences in the reciprocal mode of felt
immediacy, there is a phenomenological and
experiential basis for re-enactment in an
appropriating manner.


Whenever the caregiver has been included in the
infant's companion space, the caregiving has
afforded felt experience of co-enacting the
caregiving. The infant's alter-centric
participation complements the bodily self-feeling
of being afforded care.


Thus, when peers in need or distress are included
in the child's companion space and reactivate in
the child feelings semblant of the form of bodily
self-feelings evoked in situations in which the
infant has experienced caregiving or comforting
affording such learning by participation, then
such peer situations should invite semblant
feeling and efforts.


These are the propositions:




(1) Caregiving situations, which may appear to be
unilateral activities, are re-defined to be
reciprocal activities in virtue of which the
infant takes part in what the caregiver does, and
thereby learns from alter-centric participation
in that very caregiving.




This fits with studies revealing how the quality
of the caregiving background appear to play a
role in children's reaction towards others in
need: Those from a nurturant and caring
background are most likely to help and offer
comfort to other children in need or distress
(Berk 1994; Zahn-Waxler et al. 1979). The second
proposition, however, is more rich in its implied
consequences in the form of potentially vicious
circles:




(2) The kind of caretaking frequently experienced
by the infant in virtue of alter-centric
participation provides a basis for circular
re-enactment of that kind of caretaking towards
other children in need or distress.




Implication: circular re-enactment of abuse


Thus, sensitive caretaking frequently experienced
by the infant in the reciprocal mode of felt
immediacy provides a basis for circular
re-enactment of semblant kinds of caretaking
towards other children in need or distress. But
caretaking experiences need of course not only be
experiences of caring, comfort and holding (in
Winnicott's sense). Parent, caretaker and
others may provide various severe forms of abuse.


Thus, if the above applies, then we should also
expect that experiences of abuse and rejection in
caretaking may come to invite vicious circles of
re-enactment. Prior to the onset of defence
mechanisms, experience of indifference, rejection
or abuse may come to be initially experienced in
felt immediacy. In the case of abuse, if the
perpetrator manages to be included in the
victim's companion space, the victim may be
compelled to feel to participate in the abusive
movements. In virtue of alter-centric
participation the victim may come to experience
engagement in the bodily motions and feelings of
the abuser, not just the suffering. That will
leave the victim with a compelling bodily and
emotional remembrance that increase the
likelihood of circular re-enactment of abuse in
peer relations or towards younger children later
in ontogeny.


The above implies that children who have
experienced caretaking or parenting in a harsh,
punitive, neglecting or abusive manner should be
more likely to respond with fear, anger, or even
attack peers or younger children in distress, as
compared to responses by children with a
different experiential background. Empirical
studies point in this direction. For example,
George and Main (1985) have observed abused
toddlers to abuse other infants. Severely abused
toddlers have been observed at a day-care centre
to react fearfully or aggressively towards other
children in distress, and by the second year of
their life to re-enact the abusive behaviour of
their parents, while non-abused children in
similar situations reacted with clear signs of
concern (Berk 1994:405; Klimes-Dogan & Kistner
1990).


There is thus a potentially double tragedy of
child victims of abuse. Not only are they
deprived of full emotional holding quality in
their own life. By virtue of circular
re-enactment from e-motional memory of abuse,
some of the victims may later in ontogeny be
driven to deprive others of that same quality of
life -- if other paths of intersubjective
communion and transitional endeavours are not
opened up. But fortunately, even vicious circles
are sometimes transformed into self-other
creative spirals transcending the tragic
experiences.


We may thus speak of prosociality and abuse in
the same vein: human nature and social nurture
are at play, albeit with this radical difference:
abuse nurtures abuse, while prosociality may
emerge in spite of -- and even be evoked in --
the most horrible and insane circumstances. An
example is Anna Freud's (1951) report on the
six orphans rescued at about 3 years of age from
Nazi extinction camps, and who helped each other
and showed care in close companionship, for
example, when eating: giving food to one's
companions appeared to be more important than
eating oneself.




Conclusion -- with a neurosociological prediction


In this talk the meal has indeed been used as
quintessential of companionship and caregiving. I
have offered an explanation of how infants may be
able to give and reciprocate care in virtue of an
innate capacity for participation in felt
immediacy in caregivers and in other children,
and contrasted such alter-centric participation
by the ego-centric mode of perception,
predictably exhibited in autism. From my
postulate of an inborn companion space with a
virtual other (Bråten 1988ab), this twofold
reply has been inferred about the nature and
nurture of prosociality:


First, as for the part played by nature, infants
have the innate capacity to engage in others in
the mode of felt immediacy -- whether it be in
other children felt to be in need, or in the
caregivers affording care, and, hence, do not
only take a part in the receiving end of
care-giving. Second, as for the part played by
nurture, in virtue of such sociocapacity for
participating in the care-giving movements and
accompanying feelings, infants are afforded an
experiential social learning ground for potential
re-enactment -- when actual circumstances and
motor resources permit.




Predicting a neural basis for alter-centric
perception


The keynote here is what I term infant learning
by alter-centric participation. And now for the
prediction promised in the introduction. In a
King's College workshop on perception of
subjects and objects, John O'Keefe (1992)
raised the issue of the relation between
self-consciousness and allocentric maps, i.e.
maps of the landscape in front of you independent
of your position in relation to that landscape,
distinct from seeing the landscape from an
ego-centric perspective. For example, in a study
of a monkey moved to different places in a
spatial environment, O'Keefe found evidence of
place cells, dependent upon the place where the
monkey was, and different from view cells,
defined primarily by the view of the environment,
and not by the place where the monkey was (cf.
Rolls 1995). Here is a ground for assuming that
differentiated neural systems may be sensitized
to allocentric aspects, different from aspects
viewed from an ego-centric perspective.


Now, if by way of experimental procedures, the
neural basis sensitized to ego-centric and
allo-centric perception is uncovered in humans,
then I predict that neural systems, perhaps even
neurons, sensitized to alter-centric perception
will be uncovered in experiments designed to test
this prediction. Weaker, and less reductionistic,
is this hypothesis: If neurons sensitized to
ego-centric and allo-centric perception are found
in humans, then I predict that capacity for
alter-centric participation will be found to be
realized by more comprehensive neural systems and
pathways, modifying ego-centric inputs, reversed
in face-to-face situations.5 Should any of these
predictions be experimentally confirmed by neural
scientists sometimes in the future, and without
being divorced from the dynamic interpersonal
companion systems level examined in this talk,
then neurosociology would be born.


I thank you for your attention!




1 Centre for Advanced Study lecture in the
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo, 4
March 1997. Figures have been omitted in this
edition. For drawings and diagrams, see other
essays in this volume, and chapter 5 in Bråten
(ed.) 1998. Scandinavian readers may find
pertinent photo illustrations and drawings in
chapters 1,2 and 13 in Bråten (1998) and in
Bråten (1999; Danish edition).


2 This question has rarely been posed, perhaps
for these two reasons: First, it is somewhat at
odds with folk psychology. Although parents and
caretakers cannot have failed to notice that
infants sometimes do exhibit care and concern,
caregiving situations are usually considered a
unilateral give-and-take situation: the adult is
the giver and the infant is the recipient of
care. Second, expectations of caregiving by
infants conflicts with traditional theories of
child development which viewed the infant as
awaiting a long period of development before
becoming social and, indeed, prosocial. Even so,
there have been deviating voices in theory; in
Object Relations Theory, for example, Winnicott
pointed to the early capacity for concern, and in
Attachment Theory, Bowlby spoke of the reversed
caregiver relation that sometimes could occur in
mother-infant dyads, albeit regarded as
pathological.


3 Later, they probably acquire also an
allo-centric perspective, becoming able to see
things, for example, as localized in the corner
of this room, irrespective of one's own
position in this room. See O'Keefe (1985; 1992)
for a discussion of the relations between
self-consciousness and allocentric maps.


4 I am grateful to Mikael Heimann for providing
me with these references during his stay here at
the Centre for Advanced Study 1996-97. After my
first talk in Paris, Julie Brown told me about
her data for a doctoral thesis in preparation
(Brown 1996), documenting that subjects with
autism failed in grasp-a-thumb imitation. That
was the first indication of potential support of
my prediction.


5 By way of connectionist modelling I am
presently in the process of trying to explore
here at the Centre some fragments of such
different architectures for perceptual inversion.
Such 'neural net' simulations may not tell us
much, however, -- except, perhaps, serving to
spell out some of the implications.